I'm in Here
by valonqar
Summary: Sansa Stark feared life in chains and the taunting light and wolves, and the wolf she could never be.


Sansa Stark feared lions.

_"Ruthless beasts"_, Joffery had always told her, his worm-lips twisted in a smirk that constantly seemed as if it were mocking her very existence._"They'll tear you limb from limb before allowing you to harm a member of their pack, and they'll rape their enemy's wives and slaughter their enemy's children, and when they've had their fill they'll leave their desecrated remains out in the open as a warning to anyone else who tries to come near. Maybe your fool brother should have taken more caution, hm? After all, everyone knows the lion will always vanquish the wolf."_

Maester Luwin had told her that lions were creatures of honour and ambition; that they bred the natural kings and rulers, and that they were loyal and vicious, yes, but that they protected their people and had noble minds and ways.

Cersei had told her that lions were born rulers, that they were simply _meant_ to sit atop the lesser creatures of society, that they and they alone knew how to rule and that you could ask anyone and they would tell you the same - that the lion was king and the wolf was their follower, and that they would do as was best for their country and kingdom and nothing more, and nothing less, and that was the way it would be for all of time.

But Sansa knew enough of lions to know that for once, Joffery had told the truth. She had seen the desecration they brought to their family, seen them rape and pillage and slaughter and she had seen it all with her own eyes, the eyes of a wolf, and she had felt them push her down beneath their vicious paws and had been incapable of doing anything about it, weak little child she was.

She had seen them in her dreams, not dreams but nightmares, and not nightmares but night _terrors_, the kind that crept upon you as you slept with claws like ice and teeth like razors, all shadow and sinewy darkness, and they wormed her way into her ear and burrowed in her mind, painting pictures of horrors that she would rather forget, horrors that were now implanted permanently in her young brain, robbing of her innocence far too young and far too fast and without giving her a chance to catch herself as she fell.

Her skin may have turned from porcelain to ivory to steel, but her heart was as fragile as a little birds, and she feared them all the same.

Sansa Stark feared darkness.

The bad things always happened at dark. _Bad_, the word of a child, as anything can be called _bad_, something as trivial as a tear in the hem of a satin dress or your sister flicking her supper at you from a spoon across the hall when the prince is watching or a lock of hair falling loose from a tiresome and far-too-tight arrangement that makes one look more of a spectacle - and an foolish one at that - then whatever trivial event they have deigned worthy to dress up for.

No, the things that happen at dark are the terrible things. The rapes, men and soldiers sneaking into the rooms of ladies and girls at night with wicked smiles after a drop of milk of the poppy slipped into a goblet of wine - poison is not only a woman's weapon, not any more, and Sansa learned long ago never to take a drink from any of the men with the cruel smiles.

The murders, a dagger and an innocent look, the look of,_ oh-what-a-tragic-loss, such-a-shame, a-life-taken-too-soon, _and the fools of the court were none the wiser. But Sansa was no fool. Despite what Joffery and Cersei and Sandor and even Tyrion, when he thought she couldn't hear him, all said, Sansa was no fool. She saw the hint of glee behind the tearey eyes, the swell of satisfaction when an innocent man went to jail simply for the crime of being too poor and too easy a scapegoat.

Sansa saw and Sansa said nothing, because she knew what happened to little birds who sang the wrong kind of song.

The battles happened at night, too. Never did you hear of a glorious war occurring in the midst of day; it was under the shadow of night's silent cloak that one side would attempt to surprise their opponant, and there were many nights she would lay awake, dreading the sound of the horn and the ring of the bell and the knowledge that she might not last the morning, no matter which side came out victorious.

Yes, Sansa Stark feared the night, and not the night alone, but the darkness that came whenever her eyes fluttered shut, if only for a moment.

For anything could happen when darkness shielded your watch.

Sansa Stark did not fear death.

Not anymore.

A queen atop a frozen throne, a throne resting upon the bloodied bodies of her once-people, she gazed upon the wasteland that she once called home with no familiar warmth, none of the quiet joy and peace which she had been so expectant of upon her return. All she felt was pity for a nation burned to the ground, and disgust that even in death, Cersei Lannister was granted more comfort than her living.

Rather she longs for it - a funny thing, how greatly she prayed for life until she had survived, how terribly she longed to win until she had done just so. And now she longs for failure, for the bittersweet release that seems to evade her grasp. It is a terrible cruelty, a sick joke; watched by guards constantly she cannot even take her own life without being saved, and by now Sansa is sure that she has had far too many _accidents_ for it to go unnoticed.

And the lions were gone, and there was always a light in the darkness, and she was _safe_, and she was _content_ and she was _free_.

_No,_ she thinks, _Not free._ For she has flown from a gilded cage of gold to an frozen cage of iron, and her wings have been clipped and she is trapped, even more so than before.

Sansa Stark did not fear death or darkness or lions.

Sansa Stark feared life in chains and the taunting light and _wolves_, and the wolf she could never be.


End file.
